Crème de Violette

Crème de violette is a sweet, deep-purple liqueur flavoured and coloured by violet flowers, intensely perfumed with the powdery, candied-sweet aroma of the blossom. Bottled at a modest strength of roughly 16 to 20 percent alcohol by volume and heavily sugared, it is built by steeping violet petals — most often the sweet violet, Viola odorata — in a neutral spirit, sweetening the infusion and colouring it a vivid amethyst. It tastes of Parma-violet sweets and confectioner's violet pastilles: floral, faintly grape-like and delicate, with a soft, sugary finish. Rarely drunk on its own, it is prized as a colouring and perfuming agent in cocktails, most famously supplying the pale lavender tint and floral lift of the Aviation and the Blue Moon.